


i'm sorry about the blood. (i wish it was mine.)

by braigwen_s



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: Canon-Typical Ableism, Downey isn't a good person and nor is he trying to be one. But he is three-dimensional, Gen, Post-MAA Pre-FOC, Shared History
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:20:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28423848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/braigwen_s/pseuds/braigwen_s
Summary: Downey thinks he would have killed Cruces, thinks Cruces should have killed Vetinari, thinks that he could have killed the both of them, and kicks a chair, in that order.
Relationships: Lord Downey & Dr Cruces, Lord Downey & Havelock Vetinari
Comments: 4
Kudos: 14





	i'm sorry about the blood. (i wish it was mine.)

Downey had never really wanted to kill Vetinari, or to permanently maim him, or even to watch other people do either. He had only thought he had because he was young and an idiot, and that was the kind of thing young idiots thought when they were handed knives and poison books and told that to land on top of a grading curve the herd of the cohort sometimes needed to be thinned out.

He had wanted to upset him; he had wanted to abuse him. But there was something fluttering in Downey’s throat, wanting to bleat out ‘not like this’. Not like this. He laughed at himself. How would he have preferred it? Would he have liked to watch Vetinari bleed out up close and personal, instead of from the top of a tower? From his own lovely stiletto? Not bleed at all?

Downey had been going to kill Dr Cruces. He hadn’t known that as a child, either. But he had known it of late, because his palette had matured from irritation over scolding to resentment over handling of the Guild’s leadership, and Downey wasn’t a young idiot anymore, and was, in fact, the best candidate to secede him. He sort of felt a bit jilted, that somebody else had killed the old man first.

He was also making that rudimentary mistake that Assassins should never make; thinking ‘maybe if I had killed him first, this would not have happened’. Cruces’ body had not been heavy. Downey had not feared the Watchmen any more than he had feared them three decades and two Patricians hence. He kept telling himself he felt nothing, what Assassins were supposed to feel, and not whatever it was he was feeling. He was happy to be Guild leader. Or he was satisfied, or vindicated, or something. He told himself he felt something about that, and that he felt nothing about seeing the pale dead face of his childhood professor. He had been going to be the one to take his life, anyway. He told himself he felt nothing about seeing the pool of blood on the cobbles so far below, nothing about its trail, and maybe that much was true. He did feel about what the trail led to.

He had bullied him when they were kids. That was Downey’s issue, which was nonsensical and childish and nothing to do with what should have been Downey’s real problem, the fact that Vetinari was the damn Patrician and now Downey was on the City Council as leader of the Assassins’ Guild.

He had done well for himself. Not many Patricians survived for that long. And he was still alive.

It might’ve been because Downey was an Assassin by trade and by study, but it grated on him, any other Assassin, former or no, going about in broad daylight _crippled_. It didn’t look good for the Guild; they should just die. But, then, Vetinari had always been a bad look for the Guild. Downey was morally conflicted, and hated himself for admitting to moral-having. He was supposed to be utterly and clinically utilitarian. Like Vetinari. Was he jealous? No, he felt nothing. Downey felt nothing.

Nothing at all about this man who he had thrown down a flight of stairs at age fourteen. Nothing at all about this man who, Downey knew, bore a long and shallow scar on his arm from Downey’s own blade from age sixteen and too much whisky and exam stress for his adolescent amygdala. _I’m sorry about your mangled leg. It should have been me mangling it._

That was preposterous, even only in Downey’s head. He scowled around Cruces’ old office, and kicked a chair, for old times’ take. Violence for the sake of it. Not for political power, just to make something, someone, else hurt. That had been his teenage life. Now everything needed receipts. Vetinari had seen to that.

Maybe Vetinari had wanted receipts from him, for every bruise and broken bone and secret tear he thought he managed to hide from the entire Guild School. Maybe he had just done it to please Professor Mericet. Gods knew the man was an insufferable paper-pusher. Vetinari had liked his class, for some reason.

Downey had hated it, of course. Mostly because of Mericet. Only a little bit because Dog-Botherer had liked it. Downey felt the old nickname sour his mouth. He had forced himself not to use it after had become the Patrician, because Patricians had torturers to attend to that sort of old inside joke between school peers. Hah. Downey had liked dogs, too. But he hadn't had a last name that had started with the word ‘vet’.

_I_ _never did like old Cruces_. Things had been tense between Dr. Cruces and Lord Vetinari over the last few years, but when he had been a child he had tattled on Downey to Cruces like he was determined to beat his own record every week. And then when they were undergraduates, Cruces hadn’t been Vetinari’s advisor but he had given Vetinari advice anyway, and Vetinari, in some form of major miracle, had taken it.

Downey looked for something he could throw into a fireplace and not end up exploding or fumigating the whole wing with. Becoming head of the Guild wasn’t meant to be personally complicated. It was meant to be pure. Just politics and poisons. But no, Cruces had to dash his hoped one final time. Vetinari had to screw things up for Downey yet again.

_I’m sorry about your mangled leg. It should have been me mangling it._

Again.


End file.
